COSMOS, VOL. II - World eBook Library

DESCRIPTIONS OF NATURE BY THE INDIANS. 6*97
the first who boldly rent asunder these fetters of the intellect,
and thus as it were absolved nature, and restored her to her
ancient rights.
We have hitherto depicted the contrasts manifested accord-
ing to the different periods of time in the closely allied literature
of the Greeks and Romans. But differences in the mode
of thought are not limited to those which must be ascribed to
the age alone, that is to say,
to passing events which are con-
stantly modified by changes in the form of government, social
manners, and religious belief; for the most striking differences
are those generated by varieties of races and of intellectual
development. How different are the manifestations of an
animated love for nature and a poetic colouring of natural
descriptions amongst the nations of Hellenic, Northern Germanic,
Semitic, Persian, or Indian descent ! The opinion has
been repeatedly expressed, that the love of nature evinced by
northern nations, is to be referred to an innate longing for the
pleasant fields of Italy and Greece, and for the wonderful
luxuriance of tropical vegetation, when contrasted with their
own prolonged deprivation of the enjoyment of nature during
the dreary season of winter. We do not deny that this longing
for the land of palms diminishes as we approach Southern
France or the Spanish peninsula, but the now generally
adopted and ethnologically correct term of Indo- Germanic
nations should remind us that too general an influence ought
not to be ascribed to northern winters. The luxuriant poetic
literature of the Indians teaches us that within and near the
tropics south of the chain of the Himalaya, ever verdant and
ever blooming forests have at all times powerfully excited the
imaginations of the East-Arian nations, and that they have
always been more inclined towards poetic delineations of
nature, than the true Germanic races who have spread theni-
1754; and on the Council at Paris in 1209, and the Bull of Gregory
IX., from the year 1231, see Jourdain, jRecherchcs crit. sur les traductions
d'Aristote, 1819, p. 204--206. The perusal of the physical works
of Aristotle was forbidden under penalty of severe penance. In the
Concilium Lateranense of 1139, Sacror. Condi, nova Collectio, ed.
Ven. 1776, t. xxi. p. 528, the practice of medicine was interdicted to
monks. See on this subject the learned and agreeable work of the young
Wolfgang von Gothe, Der Mensch und die dementarische Natur,
1844, s. 10.